Nickel casings for reloading for precision shooting

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fatboyz

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Just a quick question.
I acquired a good supply of Nickel plated once fired federal 223, and 308 brass from an enforcement ERT felow. It is from their matched lot operational ammo. I haven't reloaded any nickel rifle brass before, just pistol, but is there any real dif. than with regular brass? Is it as good in the precision world?
Thanks
 
I have seen reports where people have claimed the plating flaked off during resizing. The nickel is supposed to be hard on dies as well. You probably need something like carbide or TiN coated bushing dies if you plan on reloading a lot of it.
 
the only REASON i use nickel is for "special or "test" loads- to tell them apart from my normal reloading- ie i have some 338 win mag that have 275 grain bullets as opposed to the regular 250's-it's supposed to help with sticky extraction in some chambers, but i've never run into a case where you MUST use nickel cases- as far as pistol goes, the majority of us use carbide dies anyway, so we don't have to lube
 
Pull a bullet from a nickle case and the sides will be scratched to sh1t.
Is that bad?...I dunno?

It bother me enough that I stopped using it even in hunting rifles.
Nickeled cases tend to be very brittle in the neck.

The thought of one of those nickle flakes going down a match bore doesn't work for me.
 
Brass

I was useing the nickle plated brass for my .338 Win mag and i found that after 3 fireings the primer pockets became oversize to the point that the primers fell out of some of the loads and i found that a few had cracks on the necks, another fellow i know that shoots a lot of .338 said he experienced the same problem with the nickle brass, i have since gotten rid of all of the nickle brass and now use the winchester regular brass , and have never had this problem occur again.
 
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Just wondering if the nickel casings are so crappy why does Federal use them in their match grade ammo?, and why does it shoot so well?
 
Well I'll try a few and see how it works. I have over 1000 .223 so if I get 3 loads out of each it will last a while,and I can get more.
Thanks for the info.
 
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